


love is a burning thing

by dalekbarbie



Series: breathe, come together, breathe [5]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Humor, Sarcasm, Snark, yeoman rand - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 04:22:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dalekbarbie/pseuds/dalekbarbie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I mean, you’re totally in love with my yeoman and you have no idea what to do with yourself.  The last time you had feelings beyond tolerance for any woman it blew up in your face, so you’re having a meltdown and you’re afraid that once she finds out you’re in love with her, she’ll crush you into the kind of sad bastard who lies on the floor and listens to songs about dead moms and loneliness and sick kids who can’t afford shoes.  Am I getting warmer?”  Or, the one time Kirk knows everything and McCoy learns about feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love is a burning thing

**Author's Note:**

> go ahead and queue up the Hank Williams on youtube for this one. I'll wait.

—I admit I’m a fool for you--  
“Goddamnit,” Leonard McCoy mutters, the drawling irritation in his voice probably as familiar to his nurses as breathing. For a brief moment there at the start of the mission he really had entertained trying to restrain himself a little, until he realized all that’d do would be lull the ones he didn’t know into a false sense of security and get Chapel checking him for head injuries. He picks up the PADD he’s tossed onto the floor like it’s personally offending him. It never ceases to amaze that shitty days tend to just get shittier as they go; first thing he’d done today was lance a boil the likes of which he’d never seen because he’d had to cover M’Benga’s shift, then some ensign from engineering had come to him no longer able to hide the rash he’d picked up from an Andorian girl last shore leave, and after that…well. Most times a morning starts with boils it’s bound to get worse, he learned that the only way a man can (the hard way) and he hardly expects to be surprised.   
“Dr. McCoy?” Chapel sticks her head in his office and scares him half to death.  
“Chapel, don’t make me put a bell on you!”  
She looks at him with infinite patience, but there’s a little twitch at the corner of her eye that gives her away. “Like the pet tracking chip you put in—“  
He holds up a hand to hush her up. “That stays between us, just like the other thing. You know what I mean.” Then he gives her a very meaningful glare just to make his point, and all she does is look at him like she’s got no idea what he’s rambling on about. She does that a lot.   
“I already told Janice about it.”  
Rand. Of course Chapel told her…her damn best friend, or whatever those two get up to. Probably some kind of blood rituals, he wouldn’t put it past either of ‘em.   
It eventually does occur to him that he’s been standing there like a fool for a full minute, long enough that when he does realize it he shakes his head and does a real quick check to make sure he’s not actually drooling and hasn’t had a stroke or anything. What the ever-living hell is wrong with him.   
“Is everything all right? You look a little flushed.” Of course she knows everything, the woman may have the social graces of a damn stampeding elephant but she’s also got the eyes of a hawk, it’s both her best and most annoying asset. At least she knows to back off, since he’s about as comfortable with other people having their noses into his business as Spock is, he’s just louder about it. God damn it. 

“You want to talk about it?” Kirk asks him, like he’s a little kid who’s just lost his first fight.   
“You know, Jim, ever since you took up with…with him—“  
“You can say his name, Bones, he’s not Voldemort.”  
At some point in their friendship McCoy learned to override his natural impulse to roll his eyes, probably since he’d be doing it constantly if he did it at all. “Don’t tell me you’ve got him reading that now. The last damn thing I need is to have him ruin something else for all of us. What I’m trying to say is, just because you’re so damn happy that everything smells like roses and sunshine’s coming out your ass doesn’t mean you should start psychoanalyzing everybody else.”  
Kirk very considerately finishes chewing a bite of chicken sandwich before he speaks. Small mercies, McCoy thinks. “I’m just saying, you’ve been walking around like you’re about to start busting out the Hank Williams albums any second now. I mean the one about the dead mom, that’s how pissed you look right now.” McCoy gives him a blank stare. “You know the one I’m talking about, ‘Goodbye Mom,’ I think.”  
“This conversation was already bad enough, don’t you go dragging Hank Williams into this. And I know you know what that song’s called.”  
Kirk scoffs. “I only listened to it 3 dozen times when you took me to visit your grandpa and he drove us around in that ancient truck all day. I was this close to just jumping out onto the highway and ending it all, that song is so depressing. Does explain a lot about you, though.”  
Sometimes, McCoy gets this urge to just bang his head against the nearest hard surface until it all stops. Luckily he’s gotten good at fighting it, or else he’d be dead by now.   
“All right, the look on your face has just passed ‘I Just Told Mama Goodbye’ and we’re entering George Jones territory, I am not doing this again! I know it’s not the anniversary of your divorce, since I haven’t had to get Spock to help me get you off the floor—“  
“One time and I’ll never live it down, damn it, Jim.”  
“And it isn’t your birthday, you don’t completely hate that. You do like cake.”  
McCoy looks at him, that fond expression that says ‘Jim, you’re an idiot and sometimes I wish I’d thrown up on you when I had the chance.’ “If we’re gonna sit here until you figure it out, we’ll be here too long. This is only a five year mission after all.” He sighs then, long and plaintive. He does hate his birthday, if only because now he has to eat replicated cake and that just ain’t right, but then again the only thing Jim bothers to observe anymore is a six-foot green-blooded colossal pain in the ass that causes him no end of grief, so he’s not surprised.   
Suddenly Kirk freezes, his half-eaten chicken sandwich abandoned, and he stares at McCoy for a few seconds. “I cannot believe I didn’t see it sooner.”  
“Well, I sure can,” McCoy says, and he steals the rest of the sandwich. “Care to share with the rest of the class? Oh, wait, please don’t. Feel free to keep whatever breakthrough you think you’re having to yourself, just like I wish you’d do with every minute detail of your sex life.”   
“We both know that’ll never happen, but you can hold onto that faint hope if that’s what it takes to get you through life. It’s Rand, isn’t it?”  
McCoy flushes and sputters. “What the hell do you mean, it’s Rand?”  
“I mean, you’re totally in love with my yeoman and you have no idea what to do with yourself. The last time you had feelings beyond tolerance for any woman it blew up in your face, so you’re having a meltdown and you’re afraid that once she finds out you’re in love with her, she’ll crush you into the kind of sad bastard who lies on the floor and listens to songs about dead moms and loneliness and sick kids who can’t afford shoes. Am I getting warmer?”  
McCoy sits there, sad abandoned sandwich in hand--and gapes, his face reddening. He’s the kind of man for whom conversations like this, if they can’t be avoided, are only ever undertaken behind a locked door with enough alcohol to take down an elephant, or they’re bottled up inside and only come out after consuming enough alcohol to make a lesser man cry. This is neither of those times, and damned if he knows what the hell to do. Damn if Jim isn’t right, too.   
“Chapel got to you with those self-help books, didn’t she,” he says with a grimace, and he eats the sandwich.   
“I will neither confirm nor deny. But seriously, Bones, Rand is a nice woman. A bit of a ball-buster, but in a good way, and I think that’s what you need. You should tell her how you feel.” McCoy can tell the minute Kirk glimpses Spock coming into the mess because he may as well have cartoon hearts coming out of his eyes, so he decides he better high-tail it out of there before, God forbid, this somehow gets worse.   
“Oh, go to hell,” he says, and stalks out, leaving his plate for Kirk to clean up. Serves him right, the bastard. He really is going to confiscate Chapel’s self-help books and throw them out an airlock, the next chance he gets. 

Right after beta shift, McCoy finds himself insistently pressing the buzzer outside Janice Rand’s quarters because this has got to stop, He can’t be acting like a damn fool to the point that Jim Kirk notices, he just can’t.   
“I’m coming, Jesus, whoever you are let me at least get dressed! Computer, make yourself useful and open the door.” He hears scuffling and the sound of Rand stubbing her toe and then cursing a blue streak, and the door opens. “Oh, it’s you. Had I known, I would’ve done something with my face.” Rand ushers him inside just as Yeoman Danners next door pokes her nosy head out to see what all the racket is. McCoy is kind of surprised she hasn’t complained, living next to Rand as long as she has, that or bludgeon her in her sleep.   
“Well what’s going on? You look weird.” He feels weird hearing that from a woman with hair that reminds him of the wicker baskets his grandmother crafted out on the porch during the summer and that damn whale painting staring at him from across the room. Even though he’s a doctor and not a gentleman, he lets that one go. The quizzical look on Rand’s face only gets worse, so he figures he might as well spit it out before anything escalates.   
“Are you sure you’re okay? You look like you’re going to throw up. Did you come all the way here just to use the bathroom? I have to share mine with Danners, and if you don’t want her knowing your business you’d probably be better off—“  
“No! Why would I—Rand, could you sit down for a minute, you’re makin’ me nervous.” Rand sits on the edge of her bed, her fluffy monster slippers peeking out from the hem of her robe. They look like giant furry monster claws and that shouldn’t be charming, they belong on a maladjusted child but then again Rand’s not quite—well, she’s just…Rand. He turns away, unintentionally gazing right at that stupid painting which just makes it worse.   
Rand manages to stay quiet for a minute while he has a very stoic panic attack. “Are you breaking up with me?” He turns back around to see her staring at her feet, pretending nonchalance; he can tell because her voice is steady but her face is a little pale, like it gets when she doesn’t want to talk about something. “I know we were never really…official or anything, and if you are that’s okay, I’m a big girl and I figured going in that you probably weren’t interested in anything long term and if you want some time alone or you met someone else that’s--“  
McCoy gets closer and looks her square in the eye so she can’t miss his meaning. “Of all the damn fool things I could do, why would you ever think I’d take a second look at anybody else when I could look at you?”  
Janice gulps, a rare blush covering her cheeks. “Good answer.” Things kind of…escalate from there. 

The next morning at 0700 he shuffles out of Rand’s quarters and figures after all that, someone should probably go make sure Yeoman Danners next door isn’t plotting anything bad, because if she wasn’t before she damn sure is now. The thought shouldn’t make him smile but it does, a little.

\--because you’re mine, I walk the line--


End file.
